This year, we're taking a longer term view of support for efforts to end
the frailty and disease caused by aging.

Sign up to make monthly donations to the SENS Research Foundation in
support of rejuvenation research programs, and we will match
the next year of your gifts.
Learn more »

Fight Aging!

Do you want to live a longer life in good health? Simple practices can make some difference, such
as exercise or calorie restriction. But over the long haul all that really matters is progress in medicine:
building new classes of therapy to repair and reverse the known root causes of aging. The sooner these
treatments arrive, the more lives will be saved. Find out how to help »

02

Sep

2014

Arguing for Cellular Senescence as a Contribution to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major disease of the lungs. It primarily occurs after a prolonged period of cigarette smoking. Chronic inflammation of airways and the alveolar space as well as lung tissue destruction are the hallmarks of COPD. Recently it has been shown that cellular senescence might play a role in the pathogenesis of COPD.

Senescence can be induced by several genotoxic factors apart from telomere attrition. When senescence induction is based on DNA damage, senescent cells display a unique phenotype, which has been termed "senescence-associated secretory phenotype" (SASP). SASP may be an important driver of chronic inflammation and therefore may be part of a vicious cycle of inflammation, DNA damage, and senescence. This research perspective aims to showcase cellular senescence with relevance to COPD and the striking similarities between the mediators and secretory phenotype in COPD and SASP.

All of Fight Aging!, with the exception of the
introductory articles, is published under the
Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 license. In short, this means that you are encouraged to
republish and rewrite Creative Commons licensed Fight Aging! content in any
way you see fit. We only ask that that you are polite and (a) link to the
original, (b) attribute the author, and (c) attribute Fight Aging!.